Ipods in Accra Read online

  ‘Hey!’ I said.

  Nick stopped me and grabbed my hand. He shuffled slightly in front of me in a protective manner. We looked behind the guard and saw a man surrounded by three other men heading our way.

  ‘Ohmigod! Is that, is that …?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Nick said, equally shocked.

  We realised we were staring at the Asantehene, King of the Asante. We stood there dumbstruck.

  ‘Makeeda, curtsy!’ Nick whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s nearly here – curtsy!’ Nick said frantically.

  I tried to curtsy and almost landed on my backside. I was bent at the waist, whilst I had my left leg behind my right, in a weird cross between a bow and a curtsy.

  As soon as they passed, Nick burst into laughter.

  ‘What was that? You looked like you were doing some weird yoga pose.’

  ‘Shut up!’ I said, swatting him.

  ‘Yeah, pose of the child, dying for a pee!’ he teased.

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ I said.

  ‘So what do you want to do now?’

  ‘Eat.’

  ‘Surprise, surprise!’ Nick said, poking my hip.

  ‘You think I’m fat, don’t you?’

  ‘What? No!’ he said, going red.

  ‘I say I want to eat and you —’

  ‘Makeeda, don’t be stupid. I was messing around. You look really healthy …’

  ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Oh,’ Nick said. ‘Um … what I meant was …’

  ‘No, you just called me fat!’ I interrupted. ‘Ohmigod! Everyone knows what “healthy” means when you say it like that!’

  ‘Makeeda, seriously I didn’t mean it,’ Nick pleaded.

  ‘Is that why you didn’t kiss me in the museum?’

  ‘What?’ Nick said, confused. ‘Please tell me that you don’t expect us to be kissing all the time?’

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘Once would be nice …’

  ‘You’re so weird sometimes,’ Nick said, walking ahead of me.

  ‘Yeah and you’re shallow!’ I retorted.

  ‘Whatever!’

  We walked in silence. I didn’t really believe that Nick was shallow enough to stop liking the new curvier me, but I couldn’t be sure either. His ex-girlfriend was Amazonian Anoushka, a model.

  We headed into a small restaurant. The owner’s children were busy dancing to some music on the radio while other diners enjoyed the entertainment. We sat down and ordered some Chinese food. We had had enough corn on the cob and wanted to eat something that we’d normally eat in London.

  ‘I don’t have a problem with the way you look,’ Nick said, staring at me.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Are you kidding? You look hot! I mean, nice … oh I didn’t mean … sorry,’ Nick said, blushing.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, shocked. Then I thought, He thinks I’m hot? If he thinks I’m hot, then I must look OK, so why do I keep thinking that I don’t?

  ‘Too weird, right? I didn’t want you to freak out, so I said that other word,’ Nick said.

  I smiled. ‘Oh. I just wasn’t sure if you still liked me that way.’

  ‘Yeah! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I don’t just want to be your friend, Makeeda.’ He reached out for my hand.

  At last! I had needed to hear him say it again. Yes, Nick was in Ghana, but until now I wasn’t sure if it meant that he really fancied me.

  ‘Really? I mean, you’re OK with the way I look now?’

  ‘Definitely!’ he said enthusiastically. ‘I prefer girls who, um … look like you.’

  I could tell he was being hypersensitive about his choice of words.

  ‘What about girls like Anoushka?’ I asked.

  ‘She was OK, but she looked better when she wasn’t working as a model. Some of the clients weighed the girls to make sure they were skinny enough before agreeing to use them.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I know. I kept dropping hints that she should ditch it, but she was modelling before she met me, so I didn’t have that right. Besides, she knew what she was doing.’

  Anoushka used to be my maths tutor before Nick. She had once told me that she didn’t find every part of her modelling career easy. This must have been what she was talking about.

  ‘OK, so if you like me, then why …’

  ‘Makeeda, we’re not in London!’ Nick replied. ‘I can’t kiss you with an audience. Besides, you have just had your bragoro …?’

  He had a pretty good point. If people saw us kissing, they might get the wrong idea and then we’d be in a whole heap of trouble. Nana-Amma told me that, in the old days, if a young woman was found not to be pure on her bragoro, she brought shame on her family, clan and village. The offending couple were ostracised from the community and the entire village had to be purified.

  ‘Anyway, there’s a beauty in restraint,’ he said, giving me an intense stare.

  ‘OK,’ I said, not quite understanding him.

  ‘You know, it’s not me with the problem with the way you look – it’s you.’

  He was right. I could see I’d been picking a fight with him, because of my own doubts about my new body.

  By the time the food came, Nick and I were back to our usual selves. When we left to meet Tanisha and Kofi, he held my hand and we kissed twice when there was no one around. I felt more relaxed about being around him and I liked the fact that we could be completely straight with each other. It had been a weird first date, though, as we hadn’t exactly been on our best behaviour, nor had we attempted to impress each other. But it felt all the better for it.

  I was excited at the thought of spending more time with Nick in Ghana in the remaining few days of the holiday. But part of me couldn’t wait to see him in England, where it didn’t matter who saw us together.

  Chapter 12

  The Voiceless

  ‘Makeeda?’ Comfort poked her head into the living room. ‘Do you want to come to the market with me?’

  ‘Yes, OK,’ I replied. I was already getting bored. Nick wouldn’t be around until the afternoon and Tanisha, Delphina and Mum had gone to an international business fair in town after stopping off at the abattoir with a goat Nick’s nana had been given as a present. This was just daily life in Ghana, but there was no way I wanted to be around animals being killed; it had been weird enough watching Comfort kill a chicken the previous week. I could still remember the smell of the feathers in hot water (apparently it made the chicken easier to pluck). Mum and Tanisha tried to tell me that it would the most organic chicken I would ever eat. I’m not a vegetarian, but seeing that poor dead bird made me reconsider.

  Our taxi stopped and Comfort stepped out on to the road. It wasn’t like a tarmacked road in England, rather it looked like orange clay – not soft but hard and rock-like. The proper tarmac roads had speckles of orange dust on their edges. There were as many taxis as people. Across the road I could see the gated entrance to the market.

  ‘Stay close,’ Comfort said.

  Her words made me feel like a child, but I knew she was right. I could easily get lost amongst the crowd.

  We entered the market and I saw rows and rows of stalls. It was huge – it looked even bigger than East Street Market in South London! The stalls were made up of tables or just huge bags of merchandise where women in straw hats were selling the most colourful, ripe fruit and vegetables I’d ever seen. It was just like in The Wizard of Oz, when everything goes from black and white to colour in the strange new world. On the other side, I could see people selling sandals, clothing and fried yams and pepper sauce. The smell of fried fish wafted past us, along with freshly roasted corn on the cob, making my mouth water.

  ‘Nsuo! Nsuo! Ice water!’ a young man screamed from behind us. He was carrying a large basket of bagged water on his head. I remembered being little and asking Nana- Amma to show me how to carry baskets and things on my head. I tried with a book, but it kept toppling off and, when it dropped
on her foot, she told me there was nothing wrong with using my hands.

  As we walked through the aisles, all the stallholders immediately began calling to me.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘They realise you’re a tourist,’ Comfort said.

  ‘Come buy my peppers,’ said a woman wearing a T-shirt and a skirt of ntoma. Her hair was wrapped in a scarf to conceal her hair rollers. It made me smile. In Ghana, everyone always takes good care of their hair.

  ‘No, her peppers are rotten, buy my fruit instead – here’s some ankaa! said another. I watched as she used a huge knife to peel an orange. It looked so good.

  ‘We don’t need peppers, do we, Comfort?’

  Comfort shook her head and laughed. ‘No, but I think you need that orange.’

  After I’d bought my orange, then two coconuts with fresh juice inside, we bought some yams, freshly made kenkey and a bag full of shallots. I loved shallots but hated peeling them.

  Just as we were heading to the taxi rank, a small girl stopped us. She was about seven and was wearing an old cotton dress and sandals. I recognised the dress as the same one Delphy used to have a few years ago. Her skin looked ashy, almost like she hadn’t used any cream in a while.

  ‘Yaa?’ Comfort said, looking anxious. It turned out that the little girl was Comfort’s sister Yaa and she’d been sent to get Comfort because their twelve-year-old brother Kwasi had gone missing. Comfort was horrified and asked if we could take a taxi back to her family home and I quickly agreed.

  * * *

  The house wasn’t what I expected. It was very modest and there were only five rooms, including the bathroom and kitchen. It didn’t seem enough room for a family of five, but they managed to make do. There were no plants in the corners, nor was there a huge TV in the living room. There was just a small television and radio against one wall. It felt like a minimalist home, except the minimalism here was owing to poverty and not by design. As soon as Comfort introduced me, her family began fussing over me. She looked embarrassed when her mother welcomed me and offered their best chair for me to sit in. I declined and sat on the floor with Comfort.

  I listened to her mother urgently explain what happened in Twi. It was frustrating – she was clearly really upset and I had to wait for Comfort to translate for me. Apparently, a man had come earlier that day looking for boys to work with fishermen. He had convinced Kwasi’s best friend Ata to work for him and, shortly after, Kwasi had disappeared too. Their mother’s main concern was the fact that neither boy could swim.

  ‘Can’t you call the police?’ I asked.

  The family all stared at me like I’d grown an extra head.

  ‘It’s not like England, Makeeda,’ Comfort said. ‘Many children go off with these men.’

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Sometimes people’s children get swallowed up by the sea,’ Comfort’s mother said in English, before bursting into tears.

  I couldn’t really see how we could help, other than trying to find them ourselves. We still had some money left over, so I suggested that Comfort and I took a taxi and had a look around the area. Perhaps they hadn’t gone too far.

  After an hour of searching the markets and asking roadside fruit sellers if they’d seen the boys, we spotted Kwasi and Ata walking on the road heading home. Kwasi was a bit taller than Ata and had his arm draped across his friend’s shoulder. I could see straight away how much Kwasi looked like his mother. Within minutes we had them in the taxi and back home.

  Comfort’s mother screamed. ‘Yeda Nyame ase! she kept repeating and she hugged them both. She kept thanking me, which I found a bit weird as I hadn’t done much. Ata’s father also ran out of his home to thank me. Comfort was concerned about the use of Nana-Amma’s money on the taxi, but I told her I’d replace it out of my own money, so she’d never have to know.

  I remembered Mum telling me that many children from poor backgrounds get persuaded to leaving home and working in dangerous and life-threatening situations and are exploited for their labour. Usually the children go of their own volition, but others are virtually sold by their parents. I was pretty sure Ata had left believing he could help his family financially. Apparently, Kwasi had only chased after Ata to convince him that he’d be a terrible fisherman. When the man who had offered him the job heard Kwasi’s made- up story of Ata’s bad heart, he let them go but said he wouldn’t drive them home.

  Eventually, we got back to Nana-Amma’s, and Comfort retold the story to Nick and her friend Maame-Sika, who worked for a family a few houses away and had come round to drop off some food.

  I couldn’t help staring at Comfort, and thinking about how hard her life was compared to mine.

  ‘Why should children and young people have to work instead of going to school?’ I asked.

  ‘Makeeda, I don’t think it’s that simple,’ said Nick.

  ‘It should be though, shouldn’t it?’ I retorted. ‘I mean, every person should be entitled to the same things as we have in England. Why did Ata think that working was the way forward, rather than education? He’s only twelve!’

  ‘It would be good if things changed,’ Maame-Sika said.

  ‘Yes, but how?’ Comfort asked. ‘This is Ghana, not England. What if we couldn’t work as maids? What would happen to us then?’

  ‘Education is so important though,’ I said.

  Nick frowned. ‘Makeeda, do you know how expensive it is to send a child to school in Ghana?’

  ‘Well … no, but if everyone employed a whole family instead of one person then …’

  ‘Then that whole family would work, but there’s no guarantee that they’d send their child to school!’ Nick said impatiently. ‘Do you know how many children who work as maids actually go to school, even when their employers offer to pay for them?’

  ‘Well, no,’ I replied, ‘but I reckon that there are just as many employers who really don’t care if their staff are educated, as long as they have their food on the table and their clothes cleaned on time.’

  ‘You understand us,’ Maame-Sika said quietly to me.

  ‘Makeeda, it’s just not how it is. You can’t look at everything with the same London-centric —’

  I interrupted him. ‘Wait a minute, isn’t that what you’re doing? You’re from London too!’

  Nick took no notice. ‘I mean, I think that most employers know that a percentage of what they pay their maids goes to look after that person’s family, too. I think that, if you forced people to employ an entire family, then not many people would bother with servants at all. They’d say it was too expensive.’

  ‘I can’t believe you think like that!’ I said, staring at Nick.

  ‘You know, I’m so glad Kwasi is home,’ Comfort said, trying to defuse the situation.

  ‘He doesn’t understand – how could he? He’s not one of us,’ said Maame-Sika.

  ‘What?’ Nick was shocked.

  ‘Maame, what do you mean?’ Comfort said, horrified.

  ‘He’s not a real Ghanaian!’ Maame said.

  Nick glared at her. His face had changed from being warm and open to red-cheeked and closed.

  ‘If you were a real Ghanaian, then you’d understand,’ Maame-Sika said with a shrug.

  Maame, gyae enka saa! Comfort said sternly, to Maame-Sika.

  ‘Is that what you think too?’ Nick said, turning to me.

  I didn’t reply.

  ‘It’s a simple question, Makeeda.’

  I just stared at him and Maame-Sika. Before I could say anything, he had left Nana-Amma’s kitchen and was walking out the front door.

  I wanted to chase after him and ask him why he’d reacted like that, but I decided to let him cool off. Before I could change my mind, Kofi joined us. He said the issue with servants, education and work was really complex. While some employers were willing to pay for the education of their servants, as Nana-Amma had with Comfort, many preferred to keep them ignorant. Kofi said it might take generations
to change the way some people thought.

  That evening I went next door to see Nick, but I was told that he’d left for Accra. When I asked when he’d be returning, his nana told me he’d decided to leave for Europe immediately.

  He’d left without saying goodbye. I couldn’t believe he’d be so angry with me. I walked back to my room in silence and sat down on my bed.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Tanisha asked, coming in.

  ‘He’s gone,’ I said and began to cry. Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop.

  ‘Makeeda, you’re scaring me. What’s happened?’ Tanisha asked after a few minutes.

  I realised I’d just been crying, instead of telling her what had happened. When I did, her reaction shocked me.

  ‘Ohmigod, how could you?’ Tanisha exclaimed.

  I sat there stunned. What happened to consoling me?

  ‘I … I … don’t know what happened,’ I sobbed.

  ‘You’ve just totally sabotaged your relationship!’ Tanisha said angrily. ‘How dumb are you? You let that girl say all that and didn’t once correct her, or defend him. You can’t worm your way out of this; you’ve really messed up and I don’t think he’ll ever forgive you!’

  I didn’t need to hear that, especially from her. Tanisha could be as subtle as a brick sometimes but, even for her, that was harsh.

  ‘It was just an argument,’ I said. ‘Maame-Sika probably didn’t realise what she was saying.’

  ‘She did! And even if she’s as innocent as you claim, you knew what it meant.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Makeeda, if anyone accused you of not being Ghanaian you’d flip out. Every time someone calls you the English girl, you wince!’ Tanisha added.

  She was right. Whenever one of Nana-Amma’s friends called me the English girl because of the way I served tea or something, it irked me. It was like I couldn’t ever do enough to be seen as Ghanaian.

  ‘When you insult someone’s heritage it goes beyond a simple argument.’

  ‘But I didn’t. I didn’t do that, did I?’ I said.

  ‘Oh please! He needed you to speak up for him and you didn’t. That boy flew here from London, for you! Not for me, not for Delphy, not even for his nana but for you, Makeeda. He couldn’t handle being apart from you, so he got his injections and spent his money and you did that to him?’